xAI Grok Tracing

xAI provides Grok models through an API that is compatible with the OpenAI SDK. Set the OpenAI client’s base_url to https://api.x.ai/v1 and use openinference-instrumentation-openai to send Grok traces to Phoenix.

This page instruments OpenAI SDK calls to xAI’s API. It is not a separate xAI-specific OpenInference instrumentor.

Install

pip install arize-phoenix-otel openinference-instrumentation-openai openai

Setup

Add your xAI API key as an environment variable:

export XAI_API_KEY="<your-xai-api-key>"

Connect your application to Phoenix with the register function:

Run xAI Grok

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.x.ai/v1",
    api_key=os.environ["XAI_API_KEY"],
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="grok-4.6",
    messages=[
        {
            "role": "user",
            "content": "What can traces reveal about a failed AI agent run?",
        },
    ],
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Observe

Now that you have tracing set up, all invocations of the OpenAI client pointed at xAI Grok will be streamed to your running Phoenix for observability and evaluation. Each call appears as a ChatCompletion LLM span with the prompt, response, model name, token usage, and latency.

Common Issues

Spans missing: register(..., auto_instrument=True) must run before your application sends requests, and openinference-instrumentation-openai must be installed in the same environment
401 from xAI: Use your xAI API key, not an OpenAI key
Model not found: Replace grok-4.6 with a Grok model available in your xAI account
Base URL: Ensure you’re using https://api.x.ai/v1 as the base URL

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xAI Grok Tracing

Install

Setup

Run xAI Grok

Observe

Common Issues

Resources

xAI Quickstart

OpenInference OpenAI Instrumentation

​Install

​Setup

​Run xAI Grok

​Observe

​Common Issues

​Resources

xAI Quickstart

OpenInference OpenAI Instrumentation

Install

Setup

Run xAI Grok

Observe

Common Issues

Resources